Date of Award
2009
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Program
Neuroscience
Supervisor
Dr. Brian Comeil
Abstract
The countermanding task requires subjects to cancel an impending movement in the presence of an imperative stop signal. The outcome of a given countermanding trial has been modeled as a race between stochastically independent GO and STOP processes and is largely dependent on the amount of time between target and stop signal presentation (the stop signal delay - SSD). Here, we investigated the effect of fixation condition on the GO and STOP processes using human subjects in eye-only, hand-only and eye-hand co-ordinated countermanding tasks. In Experiment 1, we found that duration of the STOP process, estimated through the derivation of the stop signal reaction time (SSRT), was ~20 ms shorter on trials with a 200 ms gap between fixation point removal and target presentation compared to when the fixation point remained illuminated (an “overlap” condition). Similarly, we found SSRTs were ~10 ms shorter on trials with simultaneous fixation point removal and target presentation compared to the overlap condition. However, in Experiment 2, this priming of movement inhibition due to fixation condition disappeared, when the stop signal delay for each trial was determined dynamically, based on subject performance on previous trials. Overall, we suggest the disappearance of fixation condition effects in Experiment 2 was due to smaller gap effects on reaction times and a greater variance in fixation condition effects on the STOP process in Experiment 2. We believe these differences arose due to a higher percentage of trials in Experiment 2 where the GO and STOP processes approached threshold at approximately the same time. Therefore we postulate that such trials produce a greater amount of conflict between movement generation and inhibition systems, causing both systems to rely less on fixation cues.
Recommended Citation
Stevenson, Scott Alan, "Fixation Condition Effects on Stop Signal Reaction Times: An Eye-Hand Co-ordinated Human Countermanding Task" (2009). Digitized Theses. 4077.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/4077